Now & Then

the couple, heard what sounded like smack talk, but he was too far away to discern the words. When the car drove noisily away, D’Augie kept still, slowed his breathing, and relaxed his body until it virtually melted into the sand dune. He touched the knife in his pocket with his right hand.

He’d be using it soon.

Lying on the sand dune, D’Augie was, for all intents and purposes, invisible. The breeze coming off the ocean blew sand crystals into his face, but D’Augie didn’t twitch. He was one with nature, and nothing had the power to affect him.

D’Augie began a mental chant: Lay here, wait till they pass, then jump up and kill Creed. Lay, wait, jump, kill. Lay, wait, jump -

Some type of insect—an ant, probably—found an unguarded whisper of skin above one of his socks and began crawling up his leg.

Unfortunate, D’Augie thought, but hardly a threat to my willpower.

D’Augie knew Creed and Rachel were approaching the part of the road he’d occupied moments earlier. It wouldn’t be long, a minute maybe.

D’Augie’s pants were baggy, and he was wearing boxers—a combination of clothing that provided the insect a bare-skinned freeway all the way to his waist, should it care to journey that far. D’Augie wasn’t dwelling on it, but he seemed to feel every step the insect made as it crawled past his knee and up his thigh.

Within seconds, a dozen more insects formed a line and began a steady march up his leg. D’Augie ignored them until there were more than thirty of the bastards crawling all over his testicles. He was finding it increasingly harder to remain one with nature. He wanted to scream, wanted to jump to his feet, throw off his clothes, and get the fuck off the sand dune.

But he couldn’t. Creed and Rachel had been making steady progress, and were practically on top of him. He could hear their footsteps on the asphalt. To be precise, he heard only Rachel’s feet, since Creed moved over the pavement as soundlessly as D’Augie himself had moved earlier.

D’Augie strained to hold his position. If he could remain perfectly still for another thirty seconds he could escape detection. Creed and Rachel would pass him, then D’Augie could spring up and catch Creed by surprise, slice his throat, and decide what to do with Rachel after ridding himself of these goddamned insects.

But Creed and Rachel didn’t walk past him. They stopped just short of his position.

Shit!

Could they have noticed him?

D’Augie didn’t think so. Though he was a scant fifteen feet from the road, it was practically dark and the saw grass where he lay was nearly three feet high. The sea oat clusters all around him were bending in the breeze, providing additional camouflage.

So no, they couldn’t have seen him.

But something made them stop.

D’Augie felt another wave of insects crawl up his leg. How many more, he wondered. Fifty? A hundred?

Too many to count.

He heard Creed and Rachel kiss.

Then—Oh my God!—suddenly his nuts were on fire!

Christ, it hurt.

It felt—

Christ, Almighty!

It felt like someone had built a fire in his lap and sent a bunch of bees to put it out.

The pain was horrific. D’Augie’s body started to twitch and tremble. His face contorted involuntarily. His eyes became slits, and his upper lip peeled away, exposing his entire top row of teeth. D’Augie bit his lower lip so hard he drew blood. Then he opened and closed his mouth, faster and faster, raising and lowering his teeth, sinking them into his mangled lip again and again—until he realized this activity was only making things worse.

Lying there with his upper teeth exposed, clenched against his lower lip, D’Augie imagined he looked like a lounge lizard doing the “white man overbite” dance. Except that he wasn’t dancing. He’d love to be dancing, hopping around, squishing the bugs—but he couldn’t move. He couldn’t move because he knew he couldn’t beat Creed from the front. He wanted to move. Had to move! But he couldn’t. D’Augie squeezed his eyelids together, and tears poured out, slid down the sides of his face, pooled in his ears.

The pain was intolerable.

Other-worldly.

D’Augie was being eaten alive.

What the fuck kind of bugs were these? It was as if they’d burrowed a centimeter into his flesh and laid a dozen acid eggs. Then the eggs exploded into flame at the same time. This was worse than bee stings, a million times worse, because it wasn’t a “one and done” burn. No, these little fuckers tore into his skin like shark on chum. They bit and kept on biting or stinging or whatever the hell they were doing to him and he was trembling and shaking and chattering his teeth and—

And his nuts were swelling at an alarming rate, which seemed only to serve the purpose of creating a larger area to accommodate the reinforcement bugs. The more they bit, the more his nuts swelled, and this ever- expanding battlefield encouraged a hundred more insects to join the assault.

Get out of here! he silently screamed to Creed. For the love of God, keep walking down the road!